Another View: Obama team closed ranks to bury facts about 'Fast and Furious' gun-walking operation

U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke is seen at a press conference in 2010. Burke resigned from the post in August 2011 as scrutiny of the "Operation: Fast and Furious" gun-walking scandal intensified.
A three-month operation by federal agents in Arizona and New Mexico recovered more than 140 weapons used in crimes in Mexico that were traced to purchases in Arizona.

The last word on the tragic, murderous "Operation: Fast and Furious" gun-walking scandal may be uttered by, of all people, the Arizona State Bar, which on Thursday officially issued a reprimand to Dennis K. Burke, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona for actions he took in the course of the controversy.

To non-lawyers, the sanction appears inexplicable.

For having released a pair of classified documents - and, clumsily, he admits, lying about it, at first -- the state bar has issued Burke a reprimand. And it has sent him a $1,200 bill for the bar's expenses.

"It's a fair resolution," Burke told The Arizona Republic of his resolution with the Arizona bar. "As U.S. Attorney, my ultimate client is the United States. At the end of the day, I did not follow the process."

To followers of politics, the settlement is still further evidence of what is by now obvious - that Burke and others in the Phoenix office were sacrificed by their superiors in Washington, D.C., as scapegoats in a politically charged murder case, the first great Obama administration scandal.

The state bar even says as much. In its sanctions agreement with Burke, the bar attorney observes explicitly that "respondent did not have a self-serving, selfish or pecuniary motive."

The text of the agreement notes Burke's belief about what was really happening. It notes that "these events occurred in a political context in which allegations were being published and made in congressional hearings that the (U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix) had failed to take actions that would have prevented the death of a federal agent."

In December 2010, that federal agent, Border Agent Brian Terry, was murdered in a shoot-out with a gang of smugglers near the U.S.-Mexico border at Rio Rico. The man who actually shot Terry, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, was sentenced in February to 30 years in U.S. prison.

Near the shooting scene, investigators found two weapons tied to a cache of 1,400 to 2,000 weapons that had been sold intentionally to weapons smugglers in a sting operation known as "Fast and Furious."

Congressional hearings quickly convened. They would continue until they slowly petered out prior to the 2012 elections. Despite volumes of testimony, the essentials of the operation itself have never been exactly clear: Who was being stung? And, how? What was the point of it all?

And, critically, exactly who authorized the debacle?

But the politics emerged quickly enough. Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., closed ranks quickly around embattled Attorney General Eric Holder and his top aides. As for their people in the Phoenix office? Well, someone would have to take the rap.

A former aide to then-Gov. Janet Napolitano, Burke was not a person of the Capitol. Holder's aides could manufacture enough doubt about whether the boss actually read his own emails in which Fast and Furious was explicitly discussed. But someone, somewhere, would have to take the rap. Someone would have to distract the attention of Republican members of Congress like Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Sensing his fate, Burke resigned as U.S. Attorney in August 2011. He has not commented publicly on his actions or on events surround Fast and Furious until now.

Of his decisions that contributed to his state bar sanctions, he is contrite.

"I clearly could have done better in the way that I had done things," he said.

Burke's bar sanctions involve having released two documents to the press.

The first document, known as the "Avila memo," included information about the preparations for Fast and Furious - details that Burke felt fairly outlined the plans for the sting.

As Burke's bar agreement indicates, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona already sensed that his bosses in Washington were framing a story for congressional investigators that made Fast and Furious into a Phoenix-hatched plot. A report prepared by Republican investigators suggested that Holder's office was telling Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that it was all Phoenix's doing.

On June 14, 2011, Burke held a meeting of top staffers and his media officer to discuss the ramifications of releasing the Avila memo to The New York Times:

"According to Respondent, the consensus at the meeting, and his view, was that, because of its own political interests, DOJ would not adequately defend the (Phoenix office) against what the (Phoenix office) perceived to be the congressional report's unfair conclusion that the Terry murder was preventable and a direct result of the F&F operation."

Burke believed the Grassley-Issa report contained allegations about his office that "were false and inaccurate," according to the bar agreement.

Two days after a Burke staffer released the Avila document to The New York Times, Burke was questioned about it by his boss, Deputy Attorney General James Cole. At the time, he dissembled, refusing to acknowledge knowing about the decision to release the Avila memo to the Times. Later, on June 27, Burke would admit to Cole that, yes, he was responsible for it.

"I thought (releasing the document) led the greater transparency than was otherwise going to be provided," Burke said.

The second memo that Burke himself released was a document known as the "Dodson memo." ATF Special Agent John Dodson had given an interview to CBS News in which he criticized Fast and Furious. Burke felt a memo that Dodson had prepared earlier had described and recommended the very same sort of operation Dodson was criticizing on CBS News. So, he released that document too, this time to a reporter for Fox News who, Burke felt, already was very familiar with the contents of the Dodson memo.

There was a consistent theme running throughout all of Burke's actions.

He wasn't "covering tracks," as people caught up in such scandals so often attempt to do. He wasn't constructing some false scenario that might exonerate the guilty. He was releasing documents that he felt might correct the record, which in his view was being badly smudged by self-interested partisans in Washington - including the very people for whom he worked.

"There was a dysfunctionality in the overall process," Burke said, carefully choosing words.

"Standing up for our office was not a main priority for the (Washington) office."

Asked if he was treated fairly by his Justice Department superiors, Burke is utterly adamant.

"No," he declares, unequivocally.

"The entire episode could have had a better level of transparency," he said. "And communication. There was not an effort to communicate."

--The Arizona Republic

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Another View: Obama team closed ranks to bury facts about 'Fast and Furious' gun-walking operation

The last word on the tragic, murderous 'Operation: Fast and Furious' gun-walking scandal may be uttered by, of all people, the Arizona State Bar, which on Thursday officially issued a reprimand to